


Building Blocks

by noworneverland97 (yellowsmartie08)



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Alcohol Abuse, alex's inner monologue does a lot of dancing around the subject okay, i don't know what this is so don't ask me, mentions of caffeine abuse, mentions of canon-typical violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 17:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10813905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellowsmartie08/pseuds/noworneverland97
Summary: Alex knows that Maggie knows that it will happen again, that Alex will take the punches for her team in the same way that Maggie will with hers, but Alex also knows that Maggie knows that the apology is not for doing her job but more for treating her life, her soul, with such little regard, because Alex now has a person and that person is Maggie, and as Maggie strokes her hair and hushes her gasping sobs Alex realises that quite possibly the most painful thing she could experience is knowing that she’d left Maggie with no explanation and she vows, silently, exhausted, bruised and battered and utterly world-weary, that she will never, ever do that to her.





	Building Blocks

**Author's Note:**

> Things you should know:  
> \- I haven't properly watched any of season 2  
> \- I ignore the Jeremiah storyline from s2  
> \- This isn't really set at a specific point in canon  
> \- The fluffier parts in this are for the awesome beta that is Sky  
> \- I'm sorry okay I just really love Alex Danvers

It’s a habit she developed in college, and it swings in a vicious circle: work to exhaustion because she cares too much, then cease to care because _hell she doesn’t understand anything, what’s the point._ She spends hours at her desk just staring at the same page of equations and diagrams, words spinning, swimming, jabbing her in the head until she slams the book shut and curls into a trembling, angry ball of _God I am such a failure_ , even though she knows her definition of failure is so incredibly skewed from everyone else’s, but when you have the impending disappointment of an overachieving mother anything less than perfection is, indeed, failure.

Her productive mornings start with a run, followed by coffee, but as she slips back into the pit of frustration she barely manages the coffee before she’s running off to lectures to stare blankly at more equations, more diagrams.

It becomes a balancing game. One coffee gets her up and functioning, two gets her alert and buzzing, hypersensitive and _shit Danvers get yourself together now is not the time for a panic attack_ , then she turns twenty-one and suddenly alcohol has entered the picture and three coffees and three beers make the perfect mix to let her convince herself that she’s coping.

But she isn’t. Not really.

She discovers that her hungover best is better than half her year’s sober when the whispers start following her.

“She made no notes in that class and still got more than me.”

“I heard she doesn’t even study.”

“I wish I was that smart.”

 _I’m not_ , Alex thinks, squeezing her hands into tight fists under the desk, breathing deeply to keep back the tears, because the truth is that not even her best is good enough for Eliza Danvers and it certainly isn’t good enough for her to be any kind of role model for Kara. She’s not the prodigy they somehow think she is – she and science just click.

Science expects nothing of her. Her samples are incapable of judging her red-rimmed eyes and wild hair. She slips into her lab coat like another skin, hiding behind confident smiles and sure hands, answering questions and _I think you might need some more acid, Ben_ , dreading the end of the session when she has to return to a blank screen and fish around for the passion she thinks she has somewhere inside her.

Three days later and she’s regained her mojo, storming through notes, skimming through textbooks, head so deliciously filled with knowledge of proteins that it almost makes her dizzy because _hell yeah she loves science_ and _oh my God I get it now_.

She dips and dives between the two states and she’s never felt so exhausted by the time finals come around.

It’s late into her junior year and her supervisors are sharing knowing smiles over her oblivious head as she rushes into the lab at 9am on the dot, first to set up, last to leave, desperate for the company of cold microscopes and ill-fitting goggles. Once they’ve coaxed her out of her fume hood she trades pipettes for bottles and she lets the beer envelope her in its familiar caress.

She graduates, starts her Ph.D., and at some point she cracks the art of working through the pre-exam anxiety to get a _pretty damn good thesis, Danvers_ , a handshake, an _if you ever decide to come back to research you’ll be welcome here, Alex_ , and her heart swoops with something that could be the previously unencountered emotion of pride as she fights back a grin and double checks she accepted her place at the DEO.

She loves it.

She’s given her own lab and her own team. She goes out and takes down the bad guys. She serves, protects, dives headfirst into danger with a clear conscience because now she’s using her skills to actually help the world and it feels so right. People rely on her and boy does that get her out of bed, ready to lead and inspire, show Kara how strong she is, show J’onn how reliable she is.

As she moves up the DEO hierarchy she coaches the younger agents in the correct way to breach a building, she runs through simulations with them and gives them feedback and a pat on the back when they successfully act as her second-in-command. It soon catches her eye that when she enters the command room their backs straighten and they nod at her, nervous but respectful, and she doesn’t expect the way that makes her feel. Like she matters. Like she belongs. Like she’s _good_ at something.

So she makes sure to tell her agents when they’ve done well – not all the time, she quite likes the scary persona she’s been given – and she makes sure to do the same with her lab techs, because she sees eyes light up with a casual _keep up the good work, Collins_ , and a well-placed _I was really impressed by your last report, Rogers_.

It feels good, letting people know that their efforts are recognised, making herself available to talk should any of her subordinates need it, having an open door policy.

Her first kill leaves her stumbling and reeling, shots ricocheting around her head as she struggles to breathe. She’s intensely grateful that she never got round to taking the Hippocratic Oath, the words _do no harm_ thundering in her chest as she scrubs blood off her hands until they’re red and raw, trembling as she wrenches her gun out of her holster to stare at it on her workshop bench, stare at her hands, stare at the eyes in the glass that now belong to a murderer.

That night finds her in the bar nursing another bourbon, swirling it round her glass as the day’s events flash behind her eyelids every time she blinks. She’s not sure whether the pounding in her head is the alcohol or the realisation that _this is her job_ , she was trained to _potentially kill aliens_ and almost certainly to hurt them and if she wasn’t so determined to keep as many civilians safe as humanly possible she knows she would hand her badge in then and there.

When she loses her first agent in the field it stings and it burns and down comes the crashing realisation that she failed someone who put their complete trust in her. Bile rises in her throat again and again and she shivers with the responsibility of leading agents, _soldiers_ , in a never-ending war raging outside her classroom-of-sorts and her teaching becomes focussed on _you must keep your team safe_ and _do not try to be the hero_ , her door shut because these people need a general not a friend.

She underestimates how isolated this new revelation makes her and it feels like college again, working herself to the bone to forget about anything that focusses on her because _there are people relying on me, Kara,_ and if she forgets to sleep for five days on the trot it doesn’t matter because _that’s five days someone else doesn’t have to suffer through,_ and if she takes on other agents’ caseloads so they can go home early that’s okay because _they have families._

For all that they differ genetically, both she and Supergirl are wired to take everything personally, and both she and Kara both struggle with comforting the other with words they know should help themselves. _You did good, kid,_ Alex whispers to Kara as she bears the psychological brunt of the last case they worked on, while Alex’s insides burn with the shame of six injured agents and very nearly another fatality. Family to her isn’t a break from the non-stop world of the DEO – how could it, with Kara there, a frantically energetic reminder of her duties as an older sister to protect and guide the younger. Family is risk, and so she guards herself, putting up walls and ensuring her professional relationships never leave the building. She is _Agent Danvers, ma’am, Dr Danvers_ – never just _Alex_ to anyone until Kara introduces her to Winn and James and the weight on her shoulders increases just that little bit more because _good God how are there so many people needing a big sister_.

It’s the perfect opportunity to throw herself into something other than thinking about just how many bottles are waiting for her at home and she grasps it with both hands. She’s never been one for the old adage that she’s waiting for another half, and now she has the perfect excuse that she doesn’t need anyone else when she has her rag-tag brood of near-enough-siblings occupying all her spare time, until Maggie comes along and flips that all on its head.

Suddenly there’s someone there who can and will prop her up, who replaces the wine glass with a glass of water, sends her to bed, it confuses Alex, but she likes it, and she returns the favour with a listening ear after a long day and a sparring partner after an angry one and it just _works_. _They_ work.

Her heart soars, and she’s filled with a buoyancy Kara hasn’t seen in her for years. Alex casually slinging her arm over Maggie’s shoulder, Maggie tucking her head under Alex’s chin, the giggling and the smiles they fight to hide: it all becomes part of their routine. And they have a routine now, as domestic as it sounds. Evenings stretched along the couch turn into mornings curled into each other turn into Maggie attempting to teach Alex to cook and Kara discovering that Maggie can cook, and Alex swears the only thing better than having Maggie over one night and Kara over the next is having them gang up on her in charades and tug her into the middle of the collection of limbs in the Danvers’ Pillow Fort Mark II.

They lose a kid, and she slips, momentarily. Her lab notes become rushed, scrawled, busy like her head with her thoughts of _what ifs_ and _failure, failure, failure,_ because a child died on her watch and that is not okay.

She discovers that Maggie gets it when the whispers wrap her in a safe bubble.

“I’ve got you, Danvers.”

“I know, Alex, I know.”

“You’re okay.”

The detective prises her third beer of the night (matched three for three with coffee, as in the old days) from her trembling hand to press a kiss to her temple and cradle her head to her chest as Alex lets the dam of so many years’ expectations break, lets the weight of _not good enough, Alexandra_ , of _I expected better, Miss Danvers_ , of _Danvers do not get Cs_ , shift for a tiny moment onto the shoulders of someone who understands, who actually understands how Alex can feel clever and stupid and brave and terrified all at the same time and that, that _is_ okay.

Comforting as it is it doesn’t take away her need to feel something real and she finds herself taking more risks than usual. She comes out with scratches here and a sprained wrist there and shakes it off once Kara’s run a cursory glance over her insides and told her sister to rest. She needs to feel _alive_ , and the first time she takes her fist to a prisoner’s face and her heel to their back she feels heady with power, with rage, a pure and unadulterated desire for blood pounding through her body and she should be scared of the wild eyes in the reflection of the glass, framed by a snarl, fuelled by the squeeze of her heart, but she isn’t.

She never quite loses control completely. She always stops _in time_. She pauses, watches the beaten figure curl in on itself, feels a flash of pitying disgust, but it’s _necessary_ , it lets them save a teenager, three young aliens, a family, and if she has to compromise protocol to get that done then _I damn will, J’onn._

It burns.

It’s not the burn of grief, anymore. Instead, it’s the prickling burn of rage behind her eyes, and it accompanies a wariness in those of the DEO agents who watch her emerge from the cells clenching and unclenching a bloody fist.

Kara brings it up with her and she denies it, all accusations that what she could be doing is wrong in any way because _they are scum_ , because _we need answers_ , because _I will make them talk_.

Because she can’t fail.

Not again.

She’s so far down this self-destructive path that her morning run just wears her down and her sparring sessions with Vasquez are somewhat sluggish, running on autopilot to jab, jab, hook, jab.

She’s numb, numb to the point that the shard of glass sticking out of her shoulder is just an inconvenience, her twisted ankle just an irritation, and the literal thorn in her side just cumbersome as she swears loudly and chases after the alien that has her rookie because _stupid, stupid, she should have known this would happen_ , numb as she dodges and ducks and places herself in front of her shaking rookie who whimpers and she blocks it out, sending a hail of bullets into the alien and dragging the rookie out of the building behind her with gritted teeth and red clouding her vision.

When she wakes up back in the DEO the red is replaced by Maggie, pacing up and down with an expression of furious love and shaking relief glaring out with a force only bettered by Kara’s lasers.

All Alex can say is _ow_ , and she sees Maggie fighting between comforting her and a look of _ow is about right you absolute idiot_ , and Alex can’t help the vulnerability that shoots itself into her heart because now the one person who helped her accept _all_ of her, the drinking and the self-hatred and the rage and her atrocious self-care is now going to leave because –

But there Maggie is, scolding and calming all at once with gentle hands cupping Alex’s blotched and exhausted face, eyes projecting pained understanding, and the murmur shakes Alex to the core and she shivers.

“Don’t you ever do that again, Danvers.”

“I – I’m _sorry, I’m so sorry, Mags,_ ” she can’t help but gasp and Maggie draws her closer. Alex knows that Maggie knows that it will happen again, that Alex will take the punches for her team in the same way that Maggie will with hers, but Alex also knows that Maggie knows that the apology is not for doing her job but more for treating her life, her soul, with such little regard, because Alex now has a _person_ and that person is Maggie, and as Maggie strokes her hair and hushes her gasping sobs Alex realises that quite possibly the most painful thing she could experience is knowing that she’d left Maggie with no explanation and she vows, silently, exhausted, bruised and battered and utterly world-weary, that she will never, ever do that to her.

And Maggie soothes her. Maggie tangles her fingers with Alex’s and rubs her thumb over the back of her hand, laying half on, half off the bed, tucked into Alex’s side. Alex’s body wracks with sobs for at least another hour before they fall into a companionable but uneasy sleep.

It’s how Kara finds them, and in her haste to touch her sister, to reassure herself that Alex is not going to leave her anytime soon, she stumbles over two chairs and Maggie’s bag to accidentally nudge the bed. It wakes them both, Maggie’s hand flying to her hip, Alex’s to her injured side, and Kara is apologising in hushed whispers, piling bottles of water and potstickers and _ice cream, Little Danvers?_ onto Alex’s lap.

“I got you some vegan too,” Kara whispers, fidgeting at the side of the bed before Alex sighs and slowly pushes herself further up her pillows to make room for her sister, who bounds as carefully as one can bound to balance precariously on the edge of the mattress.

“No need to whisper, Kara, we’re both awake.” Alex tucks her nose into Kara’s hair and takes a deep breath. That – that’s the scent of home, and she takes another, shaky, breath, arms full of the weight of two people who won’t stop reassuring her that they love her, whether it’s with food or smiles or playing with her fingers.

They sit in silence and eat. _If you took away the hospital monitors and this stupid gown,_ Alex thinks, _it could almost be a regular evening._ It’s only when her eyes begin to droop and her shoulder twinges, stiff from hours of cuddling, that her two guard dogs start to clear up, eyes aflame with renewed concern and in Maggie’s case, unshed tears, as she drifts in and out of consciousness. Kara presses a kiss to Alex’s forehead, Maggie following, and they squeeze her hand as they let the doctor take their place.

It’s a scene that repeats itself multiple times over the next two days. She’s never alone for more than an hour: _go to work, Maggie_ having no effect on her girlfriend, _I’m_ fine _, Kara_ earning her a careful swat from her supersister. Sometimes, it’s just one of them, and though she loves Kara dearly, Maggie understands that silence is something to be cherished, and Alex lives for the moments when she can just feel Maggie’s steady breathing beside her, uninterrupted, peaceful.

“Al?”

Alex can’t help but stiffen at the croak. Maggie’s hand rubs her arm.

“It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere.”

Alex doesn’t relax.

“Alex, look at me.”

Alex steels herself and slowly turns her head to meet Maggie’s gaze.

“Will you tell me what happened?” Maggie probes gently.

Alex swallows. “I. We – there was a bust at this warehouse - ”

“Not with the case,” Maggie shakes her head. “With you. Can you – explain what – I dunno, maybe what’s been going on in that genius mind of yours?” She smiles softly, reassuringly, and frowns when Alex flinches.

“I - ” The words stick in Alex’s throat and she tries to stifle her whimper but it escapes, and she claps a hand over her mouth and shrugs away from Maggie when she reaches for her hand. “No. No.” She swallows again, closes her eyes briefly, curls her hands into fists and crosses her arms as much as her wounds will let her. “If you want me to – to talk, I just need – give me a moment,” she says raggedly.

Maggie nods, and waits patiently as Alex raises her eyes to the ceiling, settling her breathing, locking onto that damned beep of the monitor beside her.

“I’m never good enough,” Alex says finally.

“Alex - ” Maggie jumps to reassure.

“No, Mags, let me explain, please, I – losing that kid, it made me feel so _worthless_ , like that’s my _job_ , and I couldn’t even do it well enough to save a seven-year-old. Do you know what that feels like?” Alex turns to Maggie, eyes wide and pleading and raw and she sees Maggie’s own eyes dull with recognition and Alex realises that the pain she can see, lit in the back of those beautiful eyes, is the very pain she’s describing, the pain she’s been simultaneously running from and fighting all these years.

“I have some idea,” Maggie says carefully. “But this is more than that, Alex. I can tell. This – this is not just about that kid. It’s not.”

Alex laughs, then, because somewhere along the line her sense of normal has become so skewed that she can’t tell the pressure she puts on herself from the pressure applied so forcefully by her mother, by Eliza, since the day she could write her own name.

_Again, Alexandra._

_Again. Write it again._

_No, neater. Straight. On the line._

She can’t tell where the stress of the job merges into the stress of existing as a less than perfect child. She can’t tell where her protectiveness of Kara becomes the need to _take responsibility for your family, Alexandra._

Maggie watches her, sadly, as she laughs, chuckles becoming cries, cries becoming violent sobs and a stifled scream, and Maggie pulls her in again and holds her, dries her tears, doesn’t say anything because Alex is realising, she knows, that she is drowning in her mind.

Maggie tips Alex’s chin up and presses a kiss to her forehead. Alex hiccups and lets out a sigh.

“I’ve never been good enough for her.”

“Your mom.” It’s not a question. Alex nods slightly.

“I dunno, it started in college.” She picks at the thread hanging from Maggie’s sleeve. “I could always do better. Push myself more. Look after Kara better. Support Mom more. It’s draining.” She pauses. “The drinking.”

Maggie carefully places a hand on Alex’s arm and squeezes.

“I guess I was overwhelmed.” There’s a lump in her throat and she swallows hard, readjusting so she’s now holding onto Maggie’s hand, tightly, channelling the squeezing of her heart into her iron grip. “I’d had so many years of the DEO being enough, challenging enough, diverse enough – just _enough_. And – here I can usually look after Kara, and there are enough people around here who care about her too so we can usually keep an eye on her – but that kid, Maggie. That was the last straw. I can’t feel anything but failure.”

Maggie takes a breath.

“Those prisoners.”

Alex stiffens again. “Kara told you.”

“Told me that her big sister had become unstoppable in interrogation? Yes.”

“I - ” Alex tries to justify it to Maggie the same way she’s justified it to J’onn, Kara, Vasquez, herself, but she can’t. She can’t. “It – we saved people.”

“Regardless of the consequences.”

Because unstoppable in Maggie’s job is someone who relentlessly hunts criminals to bring them to justice, but in Maggie's world it’s the cop who steps over the line and takes twisted ideas of justice, of right and wrong into their own hands and Alex feels sick.

_Monster._

“I needed it.” Alex’s voice is small, vulnerable.

“And when you saved that rookie - ”

“That was reckless, I know, and I’m sorry.” Alex’s voice is barely a whisper. “I needed to _feel_ _something_ , and that seemed like the only way to do it.”

“Sweetie.” Maggie’s voice cracks. Alex burrows into her, then, and her good arm wraps tightly around Maggie’s small frame and holds her close, and Maggie rubs her back, careful to avoid the bandages, crooning softly, trying to transmit the affection, the pride (and, yet, the confusion) she feels for this woman into her embrace, and Alex sleeps.

It surprises them all, Alex included, that she doesn’t fight J’onn’s order to take a week off work. She’s bored, yes, but the first day she’s up and making breakfast for Maggie before she leaves for work is the first day she’s felt grounded in God knows how long.

By day two she and Maggie are swaying to music side by side in the kitchen as they clean.

By day three they’re taking a careful jog around the neighbourhood, revelling in being alive together.

By day four Alex is venturing out of the apartment _(yes Kara, I took the elevator and went slowly),_ going grocery shopping _(yes Maggie, I was careful lifting things)_ , doing the laundry, rearranging the furniture, catching up on her reading, and _oh my God I need to go back to work_.

By day five they’re trying to keep Alex from going back to work, and Maggie’s getting frustrated with a frustrated Alex, and Kara’s getting upset with an upset Alex, and Winn is stealthily avoiding Alex at all costs while James tries to reason with her.

Day six, and Maggie’s dragging Alex out for a walk.

“Come on, babe, it’ll be nice to do something together before you go back to work.”

They end up opposite Alex’s favourite coffee shop – hell, anywhere that served coffee was her favourite – and Alex can feel Maggie’s reservations without even looking at her.

“You want to go in, babe?” Maggie’s voice is gentle, a pillar of support in the battle waging itself in Alex’s head, because they’ve been limiting her to one cup of coffee a day (they, because Maggie has told her an absurd number of times that _I’m with you in this, Danvers_ , that _this is a team effort, Alex,_ and God does Alex love her for it) and the temptation is so, so strong.

Alex swallows. “Yeah, I – yeah.” Maggie, patient Maggie, hears the unsaid words and nudges her girlfriend gently.

“Do you think it’s a good idea?”

“I – maybe not?”

“But?”

“I want to do it anyway.” Alex exhales loudly and looks down at Maggie, who is still gazing up at her with something resembling pride, maybe, and Alex twists her hands together, scratches at the back of her wrist. “Can we?” she asks eventually, voice small. Maggie squints up at her.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“A one-time thing?” Alex can hear the trepidation but she nods with a sudden surge of confidence.

“One last coffee out with my amazing, tough, brilliant, badass girlfriend before I go back to alien-hunting?” She pouts and Maggie grins.

“One, then, Danvers, and a latte.” Maggie laughs as Alex grabs her hand and springs towards the café.

Maggie gets a latte in solidarity ( _it’s pretty much hot milk, Danvers, how do you drink this stuff?)_ and they talk about the table decorations, the new art covering the walls, they doodle on the paper napkins and argue about hangman, they giggle, and, Alex realises, she’s falling in love. Hard. Again.

Maggie drives Alex to the DEO on her first day back. There’s a nervous energy about her as she fiddles with her ID, straightens her shirt, grabs her gym bag, takes a deep breath, and then Maggie picks up her hand and she forgets how to breathe.

“You’ll be fine, Danvers.”

Then Alex is nodding, striding towards the door as Maggie takes a step and a hop to each of hers, before they stop in front of the DEO shield on the wall and Alex squeezes Maggie’s hand, tight.

Maggie turns to her and brings her empty hand up to stroke Alex’s cheek. “I’m proud of you, Alex Danvers.”

“Yeah?” Alex tugs her lip between her teeth and searches Maggie’s gaze carefully.

“Yeah. And you know what? We remember the losses more than we remember the wins but the lives saved still matter - _you_ still matter, Alex. We’re in a job that will do its best to make you forget that, but you have me, and we have each other, and as long as we keep fighting together we are not failing.”

Maggie leans up to pull Alex into a kiss, bringing her hand to the back of her neck and letting her eyes close as she grins against Alex’s lips, before Alex pulls back and rests her forehead on Maggie’s.

“Thank you,” she breathes, and Maggie beams at her.

“Always, Danvers.” And with a spring in her step, Maggie waves at Alex and leaves.

Alex watches her with a smile and realises, taking stock of the confidence in Maggie’s movements and the confidence blossoming once more in her chest, that what she has in Maggie is not someone who will pick apart her flaws and try to fix her, but rather someone who is giving her the tools to help herself, heal herself, passing her the bricks and blocks with which she can start rebuilding _her_.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback welcome and appreciated.
> 
> Pls come and chat on my tumblr @thesesausagesaremouldy


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